What’s Important to Know Today’s students achieve the most important task of schooling, that is, developing skilled literacy (reading and spelling) over the course of several years. It is often said that grades Kindergarten through Grade 3 are the years students “learn to read”, with the years from Grades 4+ the years students “read to […]
What is “Summer Slide”? Have you ever even heard of this term before?? I just finished a Zoom meeting with a gal who has three adult children and nine grands–I asked her if she had ever heard of the term….guess what, she had not! So you are not alone. According to Scholastic, a whopping 48%
What Do Parents Need to Know About “Summer Slide”–AKA ‘Learning Loss’? Read More »
While my intent is to help my readers learn, let me share what I have learned along the way in the long and winding road leading to a book’s publication. Getting a book into the hands of the intended audiences turned out to be far harder than I could ever have imagined. Writing the manuscript
WRITING IS LEARNING! “Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.” ~Molière Read More »
WHY DO I SUGGEST STUDENTS UNDERSTAND THE READING/SPELLING/WRITING BRAIN PROCESSES? Let’s talk about this phrase: “Knowledge is POWER.” Don’t you agree? The more students of any age know abour how a task is accomplished, it’s got to have a positive outcome. Children and parents alike are often confused and upset when things aren’t going well
A few months ago, I had occasion to correspond and speak with Lisa Hanifan, who by her own admission, was an “angry teacher” and a mom who later “felt guilty as a parent.” You see, Ms. Hanifan didn’t know what she didn’t know. My colleague, Lisa, has NOTHING to feel guilty about—neither as a teacher
Start Early!! Why wait? Start with oral language, encourage interest in letters, then speech to print (sound to symbol correspondences) to teach blending and segmenting! A few things crossed my desktop this week, but NOTHING compares to the birth of a new granddaughter, which also occurred this week!! That’s number 3 for me. Molly will
Why Wait? Literally (or is it Literacy?) from the Mouths of Babes! Read More »
For some students, even able ones, reading is just “too much” work. A little parable is then offered in support of teaching literacy skills efficiently, effectively, and in accordance with what we now know about how the human brain learns to read–in other words–aligned to The Science of Reading. HERE IS THE STORY — EVERYONE
“It’s Just TOO MUCH Work!!” Read More »
Is it YOUR or YOUR CHILD’s Enemy too? I am downsizing, moving, and relocating to another state in just a couple of weeks. So you know the story. These are the file cabinets that were once filled with paper—stuff from my home, stuff from my job(s), stuff from my kids. I suspect NO ONE will
Paper is MY Enemy! Read More »
I love sharing stories. That’s why I received a gift of a ‘storyteller poster’ which hangs in my office. And that’s why I continued to receive gifts relating to storytelling over the years. Image by Lori Josephson I used to talk with my students, all of whom had dyslexia to greater or lesser extents, about
Going Back To School Is Like A Roller Coaster…Especially On the First Day! Read More »
I listened to Dr. Tiffany Hogan speak… …at the annual AIM Institute Symposium last month. Her area of expertise is language comprehension, as she is currently the Director of Speech and Language (SAiL) Literacy Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professionals in Boston. Image by Lori Josephson She discussed catching students who experience
Tom Hid the Cat in the Shed…What’s This All About? Read More »